Tech

Five mistakes you should not make when buying a laptop

Buying a laptop is a major investmentand at the same time can become a complicated decision since we will have to take into account many things, and this in the end can end up overwhelming us, especially if we are not very well versed in the matter and our budget is somewhat limited.

Power or mobility, and why not both? Dedicated or integrated graphics card, and what format and screen resolution do I need? Is it worth investing more in a premium model? These are just some of the questions that can come to mind in the moments before buying our laptop, and I know that answering them is not easy, since in the end everything will depend on the specific needs of each user.

A few months ago we shared with you a guide dedicated to reviewing six mistakes that we should not make when buying a gaming laptop. That guide was well received, but I know that some of our readers you have a preference for traditional laptops, and that is why today we are going to leave you a guide that follows the same approach, but that focuses on laptops that are not specialized in gaming.

The five errors that we are going to discover in this guide will help you to be clear about the basis you need to succeed in the purchase of your new laptopand they will also allow you give advice and help other people who also have doubts when buying their new laptop. As always, I am going to try to offer you a simple, close and entertaining approach so that everyone can take advantage of this guide, and I invite you to leave any questions you have in the comments.

1.-Choose a laptop looking only in the short term

asus laptop

It is one of the most frequent errors, and one of the most serious. I know that the normal thing when we go to buy a laptop is to think about what we need at that moment, but this can lead us to make a bad purchase. I know many cases of people who bought a laptop without a dedicated graphics card and with only 4 GB of RAM because they were going to use it only for web browsing and multimedia, and just a year after buying the computer their needs changed and it became too small for them.

I am the first to understand that we cannot see the future, but when choosing a laptop we must think what we need today and what we will need in a couple of yearsbecause after all we are not going to be changing laptops every year, unless you have extra money and you are willing to waste it in this way.

You may not want to play today because you are focused on your studies or your work, but could this change in the short or medium term? Will you have to face an important project in one or two years that requires more power? These two questions will help you to make a better decision, so do not hesitate to ask yourself before buying a new laptop, and take the time you need to answer them in a precise and well-reasoned way.

Buying a laptop that is below what we are really going to need is a major problem, but so is buying equipment that is well above our needssince we will be paying for something that in the end we will never really make profitable, so keep both possibilities in mind when making your decision.

2.-Buy an unbalanced laptop

ASUS TUF Dash laptop

Marketing operates at a level that many people still don’t even imagine. One of the best examples can be found in those laptops that have a component that stands out a lot for the price of the equipment, but that completely out of tune in the rest of its specifications. Think, for example, of a laptop that comes with an Intel Core i7 processor or a Ryzen 7, which are very powerful solutions, but only has 8 GB of RAM, or that comes with an SSD of only 128 GB. or 256 GB.

Another of the most common imbalances, and one that is more difficult to identify, affects screen quality. It is more common than it seems to find laptops that come with a good level of specifications, are reasonably priced, and also come with an IPS panel. A priori it sounds good, but then we may be totally disappointed to see that the color reproduction of said panel is very poor, or that the brightness it offers is very low.

These types of strategies “fill the eyes” of the consumer by displaying attractive specifications that make us think that it is an excellent purchase, but that are really only present because the laptop has been seen noticeably trimmed in other features of great importance.

Even if you always end up prioritizing certain components because they are the ones that will best suit your needs, think that, in the end, a laptop with little storage, with a poor quality keyboard, with little RAM or with a very small SSD It will end up negatively affecting your user experience.and that is why you should always seek a minimum balance.

3.-Limit ourselves to prioritizing only power or weight

lg gram

Choosing a laptop giving absolute priority to one of those three keys will almost always be a serious mistake. It may be that in some very specific cases it makes sense to choose a piece of equipment focusing entirely on power, such as if we are just going to move it from one place to another, or on mobility if we are going to carry it with us and we are going to move with him daily for hours, but even in these cases it makes more sense to make certain concessions.

A very powerful and heavy equipment it will be very uncomfortable to move, and at the same time it may even be dangerous to expose it to long or complicated journeys, because due to its dimensions and its weight it could end up suffering damage more easily. On the other hand, its autonomy will be very low, and we will have to always be tied to a socket.

With a very light equipment we will be able to move effortlessly. If it weighs 900 grams or less, we will practically not realize that we are carrying it with us, and if it uses low-consumption components, we will enjoy a high autonomy and we will be able to use it for hours without having to worry about looking for a plug. Nevertheless, if we have made important sacrifices in terms of power, it is likely that its performance will end up being insufficient, and that does not allow us to work at the pace that we really need, which in the end will end up hindering our productivity.

The ideal is to give priority to the value that best suits us, but without completely despising the rest. For example, if we need an ultraportable and the most important thing for us is mobility, we should opt for a device that weighs 1.5 kilograms or lessbut depending on the use that we are going to give it, we will have to balance power level.

Continuing with that example, if we only want it for web browsing and multimedia, a basic configuration and 8 GB of RAM would suffice, but if we are going to use more demanding applications it is essential to mount at least 16 GB of RAM and a powerful processor. Today there are very powerful low-power processors that also have very competent integrated graphics, such as the Ryzen 7 6850U, for example, which has a TDP of just 15 watts and has a Zen 3+ CPU with 8 cores and 16 threadsand with a Radeon 680M iGPU, capable of outperforming dedicated graphics cards like the NVIDIA MX450.

4.-Not giving the screen the importance it deserves

The screen is one of the most important components of any laptop. Our interactions with the team will depend on it, and a good part of our user experience. If we make a mistake with the size of the screen, with the resolution and/or with its quality, we will have made a terrible purchase, and we will have in our hands a laptop that will give us a lot of trouble.

I know cases of people who have been carried away when they see a small laptop thinking that “it was very cute”, and that moving it and working with it was going to be a very comfortable experience. I’m talking about models 10 and 11 inchtwo formats that fit into the concept of an ultralight laptop that prioritizes mobility, and that have value in the hands of very specific user profiles, but are not recommended for most people.

It’s very easy to understand, think how terrible it would be work every day with a 10-inch dwarf screenand also note that this it will affect the size of the keyboard and touchpad. On the other hand, the screen resolution also determines the viewable and work space that a computer offers, so combining a small screen size with a high resolution is not a good idea (nor is doing it the other way around, that is, unite a large screen and a low resolution).

Work with a laptop smaller than 13 inches will be very uncomfortable, and buying a laptop with a resolution lower than 1080p is not recommended. At the opposite extreme, 17.3-inch screens can be a good option for working with two windows in parallel, and also for enjoying multimedia content and games. In these cases, the ideal is to opt for 1440p resolution.

Screen quality is a topic we’ve touched on before, and it can make a huge difference. Laptops with TN panels are a bad choicebecause they start to look bad if we don’t look at them from a frontal position (their viewing angles are very poor) and because the color reproduction they offer is inferior to that of VA and IPS panels.

5.-Do not think about the quality of construction

ASUS

A laptop is going to be under considerable stress, not only because of the use it will receive, but also because of the continuous movements that you will have to face. With this in mind, it is easy to understand why we should give importance to its construction quality, and to the resistance certifications that the equipment has received before going on sale.

It is true that, normally, the build quality is determined by the sale price of the equipment, but this is not always so. I have tried equipment with a price of almost three thousand euros that were worse finished than others with a price of just over a thousand euros, so be very careful and do not get carried away by the sale price, since this has long since ceased to be synonymous with a premium finish.

The aluminum It has become one of the most used materials in the laptop sector, and it is understandable because it is light, offers good resistance, feels good to the touch and does not raise the sale price too much. In premium equipment there is a significant leap and it is normal to find alloys of aluminum and magnesiumor even with carbon fiber in some cases.

The quality of the materials used in a laptop will affect the sensations that it will transmit to us with use, its structural strength and also to its weight, so we must take it into account. On the other hand, military-grade resistance certifications also represent a value to take into account, since they indicate that the equipment we are buying Has been tested against drops, bumps, shocks and heavy use cycles (opening and closing the lid, for example).

I understand that when we have a tight budget we must give priority to the hardware and the quality of the screen, but whenever possible we should also take into account the build quality of the laptop that we are going to buy, and we do not have to neglect it to buy a little more powerful equipment if that extra power is going to be small or if it is not going to make a significant difference in our user experience in the medium or long term.

If you have doubts about the quality of the laptop you are going to buy, it is a good idea resort to stores that allow you to make returns within two weeks, so you can test it and make sure that it really fits what you need, and that the equipment meets your expectations. Do not be blindly carried away by the price, because as I have already said, the fact that a laptop is expensive is not a guarantee of anything nowadays.

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